A Duke in Shining Armor

“Everybody says that,” she muttered. “‘Dammit, Olympia.’ Well, damn you back.”

“Stop it.”

&nbs

p; “I think not. This situation is intolerable, and I don’t see how it can get worse.”

She’d got the dress unbuttoned to the waist. He could see her smooth throat, all of it. He caught a glimpse of skin farther down, and a sliver of white undergarments.

He told himself he was bigger and stronger, and could easily make her stop. But he couldn’t. He’d have to touch her.

He could not touch her.

Not unless . . . until. Not now.

“It can get a great deal worse,” he said. His voice had dropped an octave.

The storm went on, flashing and crashing about the little fishing house.

He swallowed. “Yes, well, maybe not such a bad idea, after all. Your clothes are wet.”

So were his. He was keeping them on.

She said nothing. She undid the belt and tossed it onto a chair.

The room grew oppressively hot.

She continued unbuttoning. She had to bend forward now to do so, and he could see the swell of her breasts above the chemise’s simple neckline. And a lacy edging directly below the chemise. It was the edging of her corset. The one he’d bought her. Good God. Pink ribbons and lace and naughty stitching, around and over the—the—there. And there was ripe and full and creamy.

“Olympia,” he said hoarsely.

She went on unbuttoning, and the front of the dress opened up, displaying the corset in all its delicious sinfulness and the neat waist it hugged . . . and the sweet curve tracing the fine swell of her hips.

Leave, he told himself. All he needed to do was open the door and walk out. A little thunderstorm wouldn’t hurt him, and if it did, that was all to the good.

He tried to turn away, but she’d worked her way downward past her hips and was steadily, inexorably, opening the garment to her knees. He could see all of the corset and part of her petticoat, which was plain white, much plainer than the wicked corset, and couldn’t have been a more innocent petticoat if a nun had been wearing it. But she wasn’t a nun, and there was the naughty French corset . . . and her breasts, threatening to spill out of it.

He stood where he was, unable to move except for clenching and unclenching his hands, while his temperature climbed and his pulse rate with it. He stood, like the fool he was, watching as she unbuttoned, bending easily down, down to the very bottom of the dress. And when she’d undone the last button, she twisted and turned and wriggled her way out of the tight armholes and pulled the dress off, then tossed it onto a chair.

She looked up at him, her face pink, her eyes glittering, her soft mouth curved in a triumphant little smile.

She had every right to look triumphant. There she was, in all her shapely beauty and unpredictability. There she was, the spirited general of a girl who’d mowed down a bully. There she was, in a lot of white underthings and a naughty corset, the most deliciously irresistible thing he’d ever seen.

Ripley never resisted temptation. He hardly knew how.

He couldn’t look away or run away or do the right thing. He’d never been a saint and he wasn’t about to start now, of all times.

She said, “Is this too subtle for you?”

“No,” he managed to choke out. “Dammit, Olympia.”

Two limping strides closed the space between them. Two more brought her up against the wall.

Chapter 14

Olympia looked up at him. He was so near she could feel the heat of his body. His eyes had narrowed to dangerous green slits.

Her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe, and a sensible and practical voice in her head said, Run.

But that was nonsensical advice, not to mention it came far too late. If running could have solved anything, she’d have run faster and farther, the day she’d left her drunken bridegroom waiting with the minister.

She’d called herself a damsel in distress, but she wasn’t. Damsels in distress were always virtuous ladies in trouble through no fault of their own. She was in trouble she’d made for herself. No dragons. No evil sorcerers. No stage villains twirling their mustaches. No heartless parents or stepparents.

No, it was all Olympia, dammit.

And it was still Olympia, dammit, half-naked and looking up into Ripley’s wicked wolf face, and smiling up at him while his green eyes sparked as hot as any dragon’s flames.

A true damsel in distress would have at least tried to get away.

Escape was the last thing she wanted.

The scent of woodland clung to him, and the scents of a stormy summer day, the scents of wet wool and smoke. Under these and permeating them, she knew, though she couldn’t quite catch it yet, was the scent of his skin. She inhaled deeply, the way the opium smoker draws in the drug he craves.

He started to say something, but as she inhaled, his gaze slid down, to her mouth, before lowering to her breasts, all too conspicuously displayed.

He caught the back of her head and bent his, and kissed her, hard. She kissed him back in the same way. No sweet maiden’s kiss because she wasn’t sweet, was she? She was Olympia, dammit, and she wanted more and more and more of what she’d only tasted before: sin and heat and wild feelings. The feelings she’d given up believing she’d ever experience.

She was aware, distantly, of rain drumming on the wooden roof and beating at the windows. She was aware, distantly, of the thrash and crash of the storm outside. But that was far away, as remote as a dream.

The center of the world was here, in the incorrect and unacceptable longing she was sick of fighting. This was what she’d wanted, very possibly from the moment he’d burst into the library with his friends. Whether it had started then or after or long before, he was what she wanted now.

She wanted to be crushed against his big body, his arms wrapped about her. She mightn’t have known it before but she knew now that she’d been wanting to feel his chest rising and falling against hers, and to feel unmaidenly and unvirtuous excitement. She’d been waiting without knowing what she waited for until now: to feel heat coiling around and inside her. Like molten lava, it slithered over her skin and under it and into her brain. It melted and burnt up everything in its path: sensible and practical notions first of all. The world softened and hazed over and spun about her. She was lost and glad to be.

He wasn’t the first man she would have chosen to lose her mind over. More like the last. But too bad for her. He was the one.

Just once.

Just this once.

Passion. This once, the man I want, even if it’s wrong and ruinous.

He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. Everywhere. Along the side of her face and her ear and behind her ear and along her neck. It was only his mouth upon her skin, so small a pressure to have so much power. But the touch of his mouth was enough to make her want more. It made her forget herself and all she’d ever been taught about right and wrong. Everything inside her that had seemed so sure and solid before—the mind and will of the practical and sensible Olympia—all gave way, surrendering to him and the power of his mouth, his touch, the scent of his skin, and the warmth and strength of his powerful body.

Oh, and his hands.

They moved over her while he kissed her throat, then the top of her breast. Animal sounds, little moans, spilled out of her.

And while he kissed her, she was aware—but distantly, as though it happened in another place—of his loosening her corset with smooth efficiency. In what seemed like no time at all she felt the ties giving way and the garment sliding from her. It was instinctive to grab it as it started to slip away. But his hands got in the way, and when he pushed the corset down and untied the tapes of her chemise with the same expertise, she forgot what she’d meant to do or why she’d wanted to do it.

He pulled the chemise down and then his bare hands were on her breasts . . . cupping and squeezing them . . .

A deep, sweet ache joined with a surge of happiness so sudden and powerful she could hardly stand up. She had wanted this, though she’d had no idea what this was and never could have imagined,

no matter how wildly she imagined.

Then he put his mouth where his hands had been and suckled her. Heat shot deep into the pit of her belly. Her knees disappeared, and if he hadn’t been holding her, she’d have slid to the floor.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Her so-efficient brain could offer nothing more.

He had his arms fully about her now, and he lifted her off the floor and carried her a little ways. He set her down on something soft. He bent over her and gently unhooked her spectacles from behind her ears and set them . . . somewhere—she didn’t care—because he started kissing her again, starting at her forehead.

He kissed her eyebrows and her eyes and her nose and her cheeks and her chin, and on from there. These kisses were fiercer than what had gone before, and they seemed to sear her skin and under her skin. They turned everything hot and hazy and dark.

He worked his way swiftly down, and she, squirming with pleasure and other, sharper feelings, tried to put her hands on his bare skin, too. She needed to kiss him in the way he kissed her, laying claim to as much of him as she could: This is mine and this is mine and this is mine and this is mine.

They were like two armies fighting for territory. But the fight was somehow the opposite of a fight. Whatever it was, it had to be done. She needed her hands on his skin and his on hers. She needed kisses, more of them, taken and given. And while she took as much as she could, she felt a loss of things that covered her—her clothes, yes, but something more. For years and years, she’d hidden her dreams and wants, and bit by bit, other parts of herself.

But from the moment she’d started unbuttoning her dress, she—whoever she was—had come out of her hiding place. She’d emerged from the world she’d tried to make safe and painless and had only made small and boring. With him, it was impossible to live in so small a place. With him, she couldn’t play by the rules and didn’t want to.

All she wanted was more and more and more of him and what he did to her. She tugged at his shirt, pushing it up, to put her hands on his chest, so warm and hard. She laughed inside, feeling triumph when he groaned, even while she ached, so deep. She felt triumphant and right, even when she couldn’t stop crying out “Oh,” and “Oh!” while she squirmed under him, impatient for something else, something more.